g , Owsley et al , 1995) We hypothesized that if the level of at

g., Owsley et al., 1995). We hypothesized that if the level of attention required in the task described in Experiment 1 was increased, older participants might begin to show a failure to discriminate peripheral stimuli. The paradigm developed in the first study lends itself well to examining whether any impairments older people have in reporting peripheral events (Owsley et al., 1995) interact with the lengthened attentional blink described by other authors in elderly individuals (e.g., Maciokas and

Crognale, 2003; Georgiou-Karistianis et al., 2007). As we were no longer assessing impairments in stroke patients but differences 3-Methyladenine between healthy younger and older groups, the methodology of Experiment 1 was manipulated to increase difficulty. First, display time of both selleck chemicals peripheral letters and central diamonds was shortened to 150 msec (from 200 msec in the first study). Second, peripheral letters were no longer red but were now white. Finally, the SOAs differed so that letters appeared at either 0 msec, 250 msec, 450 msec, 850 msec from the central diamond stimulus. All other methodological details were identical. A group of 21 healthy participants aged from 52 to 78 years of age (mean: 63 years) were compared to a group of 10 younger participants aged from 19 to 24 years (mean: 21 years). Ethical approval for the study was given by the university research ethics panel. Examination

of performance on the central task confirmed that accuracy was high and equivalent across participant groups and conditions (Fig. 4a). There was no significant interaction between the within-subjects factor of task load and the between-subjects factor of group [F (1, 30)

vs low), side of letter presentation (left vs right) and the between-subjects factor of age group (older vs younger). There was no interaction between group and side [F (1, 30) = 2.38, p = .14] and data were subsequently collapsed across side of presentation. Analysis did reveal significant interactions between load and group [F (1, 30) = 7.38, p Nutlin-3 ic50 SOA [F (3, 29) = 6.63, p